Читать книгу Marta - Eliza Orzeszkowa - Страница 12

Marta

A woman’s life is an eternal burning flame of love, some people say.

A woman’s life is renunciation, others claim.

A woman’s life is motherhood, cry those who take that view.

A woman’s life is pleasure and amusement, still others joke.

A woman’s chief virtue is blind trust, all agree, speaking in chorus.

Women believe blindly, love, devote themselves to others, raise children, amuse themselves . . . hence they live up to everything the world demands of them. Yet the world looks at them awry and responds to them now and then with reproaches or admonitions:

“Things are not well with you!”

The more knowing, intelligent, or unhappy women look inside themselves or at the world around them and repeat:

“Things are not well with us!”

For every ill there must be a remedy. Some see it in one thing and some in another, but no prescription cures the sickness.

Not long ago, one of the most justly respected writers in our country (Mr. Zachariasiewicz in his novel Albina) stated publicly that women are morally and physically ill because there is a lack of great love among them (for men, naturally).

Heavens! What a great injustice!

May the rosy god Eros fly to our aid and affirm that our entire life is nothing more than incense burned incessantly in his honor!

Since we were knee-high, we have heard that our destiny is to love one of these lords of creation. As young girls we dream of this lord and master every evening when the moon shines or the stars twinkle; and every morning when snowy lilies open their fragrant goblets to the sun, we dream and sigh.

We sigh until the moment when we are free to turn, like lilies to the sun, toward the one who, in our imaginations, emerges from the misty morning clouds or the flood of moonlight as the figure of Adonis sleeping in secrecy. Then . . . what then? Adonis steps down from the clouds, he becomes a man, we exchange rings with him and we marry. This is also an act of love, although the author mentioned above, in his nonetheless beautiful novels, insists that it is always and unalterably a mere act of calculation.

We do not entirely agree with him. It may be an act of calculation in exceptional circles and circumstances, but it is most commonly an act of love. What kind of love? This is a different and very delicate matter requiring much discussion, but it is enough to say that when we go to the altar, veiling our diffident faces in white muslin and coils of tulle, the charming Eros flies before us, brandishing a torch with rosy flames above our heads.

And then? What then? We love again . . . if not the lord of creation who revealed himself in a dream to a young girl and put a wedding ring on a virgin’s finger, then a different one, and if we do not love anyone, then we long to love. We dry up, we develop consumption, we become termagants because of our desire to love.

And what comes of all that? Some of us indeed fly through our whole lives enfolded in the wings of the god of love, honest, virtuous, and happy. But others more numerous, by far more numerous, walk on earth with bleeding feet, struggling for bread, peace, and virtue, weeping copiously, suffering greatly, sinning sorely, falling into the abyss of shame, dying from hunger.

The remedy embodied in the word “l o v e,” then, does not cure all illnesses.

It may be that one more ingredient should be added for the remedy to be effective.

What ingredient?

Perhaps a page from a woman’s life will tell.

* * *

On a beautiful autumn day not many years ago, Graniczna Street, a lively street in Warsaw, was filled with people. They were walking and riding, hurrying as business or pleasure dictated, without glancing to the left or to the right—without paying any attention at all to what was happening in one of the adjacent courtyards.

The courtyard was clean and quite large, surrounded by high brick buildings on all four sides. The building farthest from the street was the smallest, yet its large windows and wide entrance, set off by a handsome porch, suggested that the dwelling inside was comfortable and attractively decorated.

A young woman with a very pale face, dressed in mourning, stood on the porch. She was not wringing her hands, but they dangled helplessly, as if she were profoundly sad and distressed. A four-year-old girl, equally pale and also in mourning, clung to them.

Over the wide, clean stairs leading from the upper floor of the building, people in heavy clothes and heavy, dusty shoes descended continuously. They were porters carrying furnishings from a residence that was not large and elegant, but had been pleasant and tastefully appointed. There were mahogany beds, couches and armchairs covered in crimson woolen damask, graceful wardrobes and chests, even several consoles inlaid with marble, a few large mirrors, two enormous oleander trees in pots, and a datura on whose branches a few white blossoms still hung like chalices. The porters carried all these things down the stairs, passing the woman on the porch. They arranged them on the pavement of the courtyard, placed them on two wagons standing near the gate, or carried them out to the street.

The woman stood motionless, glancing at every piece of furniture that was being taken from her. It was clear that the objects she was leaving behind had not only material value for her; she was parting with them as with the still-visible signs of the vanished and irretrievable past, the mute witnesses of lost happiness. The pale, dark-eyed child pulled harder at her mother’s dress.

“Mama!” she whispered. “Look! Papa’s desk!”

The porters carried a large, masculine desk down the stairs and put it on a wagon. It was handsomely carved, adorned with a gallery back, and covered in green cloth. The woman in mourning looked at it for a long time and the child pointed to it with a thin finger.

“Mama!” whispered the girl. “Do you see that big black stain on Papa’s desk? I remember how it got there. Papa was sitting in front of the desk holding me on his knees, and you, Mama, came in and wanted to take me away from him. He laughed and did not hand me to you. I was playing and spilled the ink. Papa was not angry. He was good. He was never angry at me or at you . . .”

The child whispered these words with her little face hidden in the folds of her mother’s mourning dress and her tiny body huddling up to the woman’s knees. It was evident that memories were exerting their power over her childish heart, wrenching it with pain of which she was not fully aware.

Two large tears fell from the woman’s eyes, which had been dry until now; her child’s words had evoked the memory of a moment once lost among millions of similar everyday moments. Now she smiled at the unhappy child—smiled with a mixture of delight and bitterness at the thought of that lost paradise. It may even have occurred to her that the freedom and joy of that moment were being paid for today with the last bites of bread that were left for her and her child, and would be paid for tomorrow with hunger; the ink stain that had appeared amid the laughter of the child and the kisses of her parents would lower the value of the desk by more than a dozen złotys.

After the desk, a Krall piano appeared in the courtyard, but the woman in mourning looked at it indifferently. Probably she was not a musician, and the instrument awakened the fewest regrets and memories. But when a small mahogany bed with a colorful yarn quilt was taken out of the house and put on a wagon, her eyes were riveted to it, and the child burst into tears.

“My bed, Mama!” she cried. “Those people are taking my bed and the coverlet you made for me! I do not want them to take it! Mama, take my bed and my coverlet back from them!”

The woman’s only reply was to press the head of the crying child more firmly to her knees. Her beautiful black, deep-set eyes were dry again and her pale, delicate lips were pursed and silent.

The child’s pretty bed was the last piece of furniture to be taken out. The gate was open wide; the wagons filled with furniture were driven out into the pleasant street, followed by porters carrying the remaining items on their shoulders. Behind the windows of the neighboring houses, the heads of people who had been looking curiously at the courtyard vanished.

A young woman in a coat and hat came down the stairs and stood in front of the person in mourning.

“Madam,” she said, “I have taken care of everything. I paid those who were supposed to be paid. Here is the rest of the money.” And she handed the woman a small roll of banknotes.

The woman slowly turned her head toward her.

“Thank you, Zofia,” she said quietly. “You have been very good to me.”

“Madame, you were always good to me!” the girl cried. “I have worked for you for four years and no place was ever better, or ever will be better, than with you.”

She rubbed her wet eyes with a hand on which the marks of the needle and the iron were visible, but the woman seized her rough hand and pressed it firmly between her own small white ones.

“And now, Zofia,” she said, “be well.”

“Madame, I will go with you to the new apartment,” the girl exclaimed. “I will call a cab.”

A quarter of an hour later the two women and the child got out of the cab in front of a building on Piwna Street. The four-story tenement was narrow in front, but tall. It looked old and sad. Little Jasia stared at its walls and windows with wide eyes.

“Mama, will we live here?”

“Here, my child,” the woman in mourning replied in a voice that was always quiet. She turned to the concierge who was standing in the gateway.

“Please give me the key to the apartment that I rented two days ago.”

“Ah! In the attic, surely,” the concierge replied. “Please follow me upstairs, madame. I will open it right away.”

The small, square courtyard was surrounded by a blind wall of brick red on two sides and, on the other two, by old woodsheds and granaries. The women and the child went into the building and started up the narrow, dark, dirty stairs. The younger woman took the child in her arms and went ahead; the woman in mourning followed her.

The room whose door the concierge opened was quite large, but low and dark, and poorly lit by one small window that opened onto the roof. The walls, which smelled of dampness from a fresh covering of whitewash, seemed to contract under the slanted ceiling.

In the corner next to the simple brick cooking stove was a small hearth. Across the room a wardrobe of modest size stood in front of one wall. There was a bed without a frame, a couch covered with torn calico, and a table painted black. There were several yellow chairs with sagging rush seats that were partly ripped away.

The woman in mourning stopped for a moment on the threshold, surveyed the room with a long, slow glance, then took a few steps forward and sank down on the couch. The child stood still and pale next to her mother and gazed around with surprise and fear in her eyes.

The younger woman dismissed the driver, who had brought two small leather bags from the carriage. She bustled about, taking things out of the bags and arranging them. There were not many things, and it took only a short time to put them in order. Without taking off her coat and hat, she put a few very small dresses and some underclothing in one of the bags, then moved the other one, which was empty, to the corner of the room. She made the bed with two pillows and a woolen coverlet and hung a white curtain in the window. She put several plates and cups, a clay water pitcher and a large bowl, a brass candle-holder and a small samovar into a cupboard. Then she took a bundle of wood from behind the stove and made a cheerful fire in the fireplace.

“Ah, yes,” she said, rising from her knees and turning her face, which was rosy from blowing on the fire, to the motionless woman. “I have made the fire and you will soon have warmth and light in here. Behind the stove you will find enough wood for about two weeks. The dresses and underclothes are in the bag. The kitchen crockery and dining dishes are in the cupboard, and a candle in a holder is there as well.”

The honest servant forced herself to speak cheerfully, but the smile was vanishing from her lips and her eyes were filling with tears.

“And now”—she said more quietly, folding her hands—“and now, my dear lady, I must go!”

The woman in mourning lifted her head.

“You must go, Zofia,” she repeated. “Indeed you must.” Glancing through the window, she added, “It is growing dark. You will be afraid to walk through the city at night.”

“Oh, no, my dear lady!” the girl exclaimed. “I would walk to the end of the world in the darkest night for you. But my new employers leave Warsaw very early in the morning, and they have ordered me to return before nightfall. I have to go because they will need me this evening.”

With those words the young servant bent down, took the woman’s pale hand and would have raised it to her lips. But the woman suddenly rose and threw both her arms around the girl’s neck. They wept. The child also burst into tears and seized the servant’s linen coat.

“Do not go, Zofia!” she wailed. “Do not go! It is so horrible here! It is so dreary!”

The girl kissed her former employer’s hands and pressed the child to her bosom.

“I must go. I must!” she repeated, sobbing. “My mother is poor and I have little sisters. I have to work for them . . .”

The woman in mourning raised her white face and held her thin figure erect.

“Zofia, I will also work,” she said in a more assured voice than before. “I have a child and I should work for her.”

“May God not abandon you, and may He bless you, my dear, kind lady!” the servant girl cried, once again kissing the hands of the mother and the tearful face of the child. She ran out of the room without looking back.

After the girl’s departure, a deep silence filled the room. It was interrupted only by the crackling of the fire and the dull, indistinct street noise that reached the attic. The woman in mourning sat on the couch. The child cried at first, then nestled quietly on the mother’s bosom and fell asleep. The woman rested her head on her hand; her arm embraced the tiny figure sleeping on her knees and her eyes stared unswervingly at the flickering firelight.

Now that her faithful, devoted servant was gone, she would not see again the face of the last human being who had been a witness to her past—the last support that had remained for her after the disappearance of everything that had helped and sustained her. Now she was alone, subject to the power of fate and the hardships of a lonely destiny, dependent on the strength of her own hands and brain. Her only companion was this small, weak being who found rest on no bosom but hers, demanded kisses from her lips, and expected nourishment from her hand. Her house, which her loving husband had once provided for her and which she had now been forced to abandon, was welcoming new residents within its walls. The kind, beloved man who had surrounded her with love and prosperity was resting in his grave.

Everything had passed: love, prosperity, peace, the joy of life. The only traces of this unhappy woman’s past, now vanishing like a dream, were her painful memories and this pale, thin child who now opened her eyes after a short sleep, threw her arms around the woman’s neck and, touching her face with her little lips, whispered:

“Mama! Give me something to eat!”

Her request did not yet arouse fear or sadness in the mother’s heart. The widow reached into her pocket and took out a purse containing several banknotes—the only fortune left to her and her daughter. She threw a shawl around her shoulders, told the child to wait calmly for her return, and left the room.

Halfway down the stairs she met the concierge, who was carrying a bundle of wood to one of the apartments on the second floor.

“Dear sir,” the widow said politely and timidly, “could you bring some milk and rolls for my child from a nearby shop?”

The concierge listened without stopping, then turned his head and replied with barely concealed unwillingness:

“And who has the time now to go for milk and rolls? It’s not my job here to bring food to the tenants.”

He vanished behind the curve of the wall. The widow made her way down the stairs.

“He did not want to help me,” she thought, “because he thinks I am poor. He was carrying a heavy load of wood to those he expected to pay him for it.”

She went to the courtyard and glanced around.

“And why is madame looking around?” someone said in a hoarse, unpleasant voice very near her.

The widow saw a woman standing before a low door near the gate. She could not recognize her in the darkness. A short skirt, a large linen cap, and a thick scarf thrown askew on her back, together with the sound of her voice and the tone of her speech, showed that she was a woman from the countryside. The widow guessed that she was the concierge’s wife.

“My good lady,” she said, “will I find anyone here who would bring me milk and rolls?”

The woman thought for a moment.

“Which floor do you live on?” she asked. “Somehow I do not know you.”

“I moved to the attic today.”

“To the attic! Then why is my ladybird babbling about bringing her something? Can you not go to town yourself?”

“I would pay someone for the trouble,” whispered the widow, but the concierge’s wife did not hear, or pretended not to. She wrapped her scarf more snugly around her and vanished behind the small door.

The widow stood motionless for a moment, not knowing what to do or whom to turn to. She sighed and let her hands fall helplessly. After a while, however, she raised her head, approached the gateway, and opened the wicket leading to the street.

It was not late evening yet, but it was quite dark. The narrow thoroughfare, filled with crowds of people, was poorly lit by a few streetlamps. Wide spaces on the sidewalks lay in total darkness.

A wave of chilly autumn wind blew into the gateway through the open wicket, flying into the widow’s face and rippling the ends of her black shawl. The rumble of carriages and the clamor of mingled conversations deafened her; the shadows filling the sidewalks frightened her. She took a few steps back in through the gate and stood there for a while with her head down.

Suddenly she stood up straight and walked forward. Perhaps she remembered her child, who was waiting for the food; perhaps she was conscious that she must now muster her will and courage to obtain what previously had been freely available to her every day and hour. She threw her scarf over her head and walked through the gate. She did not know which direction to take to find a grocer’s shop. She walked a long way, looking carefully at window displays; she passed a few cigar stores, a café, and a fabric store, and then turned back, not daring to go further or ask for information.

She turned and went in a different direction. After a quarter of an hour she returned, carrying several rolls in a white handkerchief. She brought no milk, for there was none at the store where she found the rolls. She did not want to go on searching; she could not look for a shop any longer. She was worried about her child. She returned quickly, almost running. She was a few steps from the gate when she heard a man’s voice behind her, singing a song:

“Stop, wait, my dear—from where have you marched on your pretty little feet?”

She tried to convince herself that he was not singing to her. She walked faster and her hand was on the gate when the singing changed to speaking:

“Where are you going so quickly? Where to? The evening is so lovely! Perhaps we could go for a stroll!”

Breathless and shaking with fear and indignation, the young widow darted through the gate and slammed the wicket behind her. A few minutes later Jasia saw her entering the room. She ran toward her and nestled in her embrace.

“You did not return for so long, Mama!” she cried. Suddenly she went quiet and looked at her mother. “Mama,” she said, “you are crying again, and you look the way you looked when they carried Papa out of our house in the coffin.”

Indeed the young woman was trembling all over, and large tears were running down her flushed cheeks. She was shaken deeply by her fifteen-minute excursion into town—by her struggle with her own fear, her rapid walk over slippery streets amid crowds and cold winds, and, above all, the insult of being accosted by an unknown man for the first time in her life. But she evidently made up her mind to overcome her feelings, for she quickly calmed down, wiped away her tears, and kissed the child. As she stirred up the fire, she said:

“I have brought you some rolls, Jasia, and now I will set out the samovar and make some tea.”

She took the clay pitcher from the cabinet and, ordering the child to be careful of the fire, went down to the well in the courtyard. Soon she returned, breathless and exhausted, with one arm bent from the weight of the pitcher filled with water. But without resting even for a moment, she began to set out the samovar.

She was doing this for the first time in her life, and with difficulty. In less than an hour, however, the tea was drunk and Jasia was undressed and asleep. Her quiet, even breathing showed that she was sleeping peacefully. The traces of tears shed abundantly all day had vanished from her pale little face.

But the young mother did not sleep. She sat in front of the fading fire in her mourning dress, still as a statue, her hair falling in loose black braids. She was resting her head on her hand, thinking.

At first, her white forehead was wrinkled deeply with pain. Her eyes were filled with tears and her chest rose with a heavy sigh. After a while, however, she shook her head as if to push away the sorrows and fears that had overwhelmed her. She rose, stood erect, and said quietly:

“A new life!”

Indeed, this woman, young, beautiful, with white hands and a slender waist, was entering a new life. For her this day was the beginning of a future as yet unknown.

What had her past been like?

* * *

Marta Świcka’s past had been short because of her age and simple because it was uneventful.

Marta was born in a manor house that was neither splendid nor very affluent, but charming and comfortable.

Her father’s estate a few miles from Warsaw comprised several hundred acres of fertile land, large, flowery meadows, a lovely birch grove that furnished wood for the winter and space for romantic strolls during the summer, a large orchard full of fruit trees, and an attractive house with six front windows looking out on a circular lawn. It had cheerful-looking green blinds and a porch with lavender morning glories and beans with scarlet blossoms entwined around its four columns.

Nightingales sang over Marta’s cradle, and old lindens waved with dignified gravity. Roses blossomed and ripening wheat formed waves of gold. The lovely face of her mother leaned over her, and her little head, with its black hair, was covered with kisses.

Marta’s mother was a beautiful, kind woman and her father was a good man with a fine education. She grew up as an only child among loving, doting people.

The first pain that darkened the cloudless life of the beautiful, cheerful, blooming girl was the loss of her mother. Marta was sixteen years old at that time. She despaired for a while; she yearned for her mother for a long time; but youth placed a healing balm on her heart’s first wound, her face regained its rosy color, and joy, hope, and dreams returned.

But other calamities soon followed. Marta’s father, partly because of his own imprudence but mainly owing to economic changes that had taken place in the country, found himself in danger of losing his estate. His health weakened; he saw that he was facing both the collapse of his fortune and the rapid approach of death. At that moment, however, Marta’s future seemed to be secure: she loved and was loved.

Jan Świcki, a young official occupying a high position in a government office in Warsaw, fell in love with the beautiful dark-eyed girl, and awakened in her similar feelings of respect and love. Marta’s wedding took place only a few weeks before her father’s death. The ruined aristocrat, who perhaps once dreamed of a grander future for his only daughter, joyfully placed her hand in that of a man with no fortune but with a capacity for hard work. He died peacefully, believing that at the altar Marta’s future had been thoroughly safeguarded from the unhappiness of a lonely life and the danger of poverty.

For the second time in her life Marta experienced great pain. But this time it was assuaged not only by her youth but by her affection for her husband and, in time, their child. Her beautiful family estate had been lost forever and passed into the hands of strangers, but her beloved and loving husband created a soft, warm, comfortable nest amid the hubbub of the city. In this home soon sounded the silvery voice of a child.

Five years passed happily and quickly for the young woman amid the comforts and duties of family life.

Jan Świcki was a conscientious, capable worker. He received a good salary, sufficient to surround the wife he loved with everything she had been accustomed to from her childhood, everything that lent charm to every moment and peace to each new day. To each? No, only to the next. Jan Świcki did not have the foresight to think of the distant future at the expense of the present.

Young, strong, hard-working, he counted on his youth, strength, and industriousness, never dreaming that these riches would be depleted. But they were, and too quickly. He was taken with a sudden, serious illness from which neither his doctors’ advice nor his frantic wife’s efforts could save him. He died. His death not only put an end to Marta’s domestic happiness but pulled from under her the base of her material welfare.

So the marriage altar did not render the young woman forever immune to the misery of loneliness and the hazards of poverty. The axiom, old as the world, which states that nothing on earth is permanent proved itself as true in her case as it ever is. For it is not completely true. Everything that comes to a person from the outside passes, changing around him under the influence of thousands of currents that become entangled as they move forward, currents in which social relationships and laws take form. All these are subject to the frequent intervention of what is the most terrible force of all, because it is unpredictable and impossible to figure into one’s calculations: blind chance. Yet a man’s destiny in this world would indeed be regrettable if all his strength, his inner riches and his truth resided only in those external elements, which are mutable and fleeting as waves governed by wind.

Indeed, there is nothing permanent on earth besides what a man possesses in his heart and head: knowledge that shows him his paths and how to walk in them, work that brightens solitude and keeps poverty at bay, experience that tutors him, and elevated feelings that shelter him from evil. This permanence is only relative; it is broken by the sullen, unyielding power of illness and death. But as long the process of movement, thought, and feeling called life continues, and develops soundly and durably, a man does not lose himself but provides for himself, helps himself, supports himself with what he managed to accumulate in the past. It serves him as a weapon in his struggle with the complications of life, the fickleness of fate, and the cruelty of chance.

All the external forces that had befriended and sheltered Marta until now had failed her, leaving her abandoned. But her fate was not at all exceptional. Her misfortune was not caused by some bizarre adventure or astonishing disaster rare in the annals of human history. Financial ruin and death had destroyed her peace and happiness. What is more common everywhere in our society than the first? What is more inevitable, more frequent and inescapable, than the second?

Marta had found herself face to face with what happens to millions of people, millions of women. Who has not met, many times in life, people weeping by the rivers of Babylon in which the ruins of a lost fortune are floating? Who counts how many times he has seen widows’ mourning clothes, pale faces, and orphans’ eyes wearied with tears?

Everything that had been part of the young woman’s life had been taken from her, had slipped away, but she still had herself. What could she be only for herself? What had she managed to accumulate for herself in the past? What tools of knowledge, willpower, and experience could serve her in the struggle with complicated social issues, poverty, chance, and loneliness? Among these questions lay the enigma of her future, the issue of her life and death—and not only hers, but her child’s.

The young mother had no material wealth, or almost none. Her entire fortune consisted of a few hundred złotys from the sale of her furniture after the payment of some small debts and the costs of her husband’s funeral, some underlinen, and two dresses. She had never had any expensive jewelry, and what she had had she had sold during her husband’s illness to pay for worthless medical advice and equally worthless medicines. Even the cheap furniture that filled her new residence did not belong to her. She had rented it together with the room in the attic, and was obliged to pay for it on the first of each month.

That was the sad, unvarnished reality of the present, but it was clearly defined. The future remained undefined. One had to take possession of it—almost to create it.

Did the young, beautiful woman with the slim waist, white hands, and silky raven hair flowing over her shapely head have the strength for conquest? Had she taken anything from her past that would enable her to create her future? She thought about this as she sat on a low wooden stool by the glowing coals in the fire. Her eyes, filled with a look of unspeakable love, were fixed on the face of her child, who was sleeping peacefully among white pillows.

“For her,” she said after a while, “for myself, for bread, peace, and a roof over our heads, I will work!”

She stood in front of the window. The night was dark. She did not see anything: neither the steep roofs bristling below the high attic with all its stairs and landings, nor the dark smoke-stained chimneys above the roofs, nor the streetlamps whose blurred light did not reach her little window. She did not even see the sky because it was covered with clouds and no star was shining. But the noise of the great city reached her ears incessantly; even the nocturnal noise was deafening, though it was muffled by distance. It was not late; on the wide, splendid boulevards as in the narrow, dark alleys, people still walked, drove, and ran about in the pursuit of pleasure or the search for profit—ran where curiosity, some desire of the heart, or the hope of gain called them.

Marta lowered her head onto her clasped hands and closed her eyes. She listened to the thousand voices merged into one enormous voice that was unclear and monotonous and yet full of feverish outbursts, sudden silences, dull shouts, and mysterious murmurs. In her imagination the great city assumed the form of a huge hive in which a multitude of human beings moved, surging with life and joining in a race. Each one had his own place for work and for rest, his own goals to reach, and his own tools to forge a way through the crowd. What sort of place for work and rest would there be for her, a woman who was poor and cast into a boundless sea of loneliness? In which direction should she proceed? Where would tools be found to pave a way for a penniless, abandoned woman?

How would those human beings treat her, those people who chatted endlessly on the streets, who exuded this feverish murmur, rising and falling like a wave, in which she immersed her hearing? Would they be just or cruel to her, compassionate or charitable? Would those tightly closed phalanxes that were crowding toward happiness and wealth open before her? Or would they shut even more tightly, so the newcomer’s arrival would not leave less room for others, would not forestall them in this strenuous race?

Which laws and customs would be favorable to her, and which would be adverse? Would there be more of the former or the latter? Above all, would she be able to overcome hostile elements and exploit friendly ones every moment, with every heartbeat, with every passing thought? Would she be able to consolidate every vibrant fiber of her being into wise, persevering, unwearying strength, strength that would ward off poverty, preserve her dignity in the face of humiliation, and shield her from fruitless pain, despair, and starvation?

Marta’s entire soul was fixed on these questions. Memories that were both delightful and agonizing, memories of a woman who had once been a carefree, radiant girl walking lightly through the fresh grass and colorful flowers of her family’s country home, then spent joyful days, free of worry and sadness, at her beloved husband’s side, and now stood in a widow’s gown near a small window in this attic with her pale forehead lowered onto her tightly clasped hands—through all this day these memories had been swarming around her like phantoms that lured her, only to leave her torn and bleeding. Now they flew away before the stern, mysterious, but tangible reality of the present.

This reality absorbed her thoughts but did not seem to frighten her. Did she draw courage from the maternal love that filled her heart? Did she have the pride that despises fear? Or was she ignorant of the world and herself?

She was not afraid. When she lifted her face, there were traces of tears shed profusely for several days, and there was a look of sorrow and longing, but there was no fear or doubt.

* * *

The day after her move into the attic, Marta was in town at ten in the morning.

It was crucial for her to reach her destination. A burning thought, an anxious hope must have been driving her forward, because she walked quickly and slowed her steps only when she reached Długa Street. Here she walked more and more slowly, a weak blush covered her pale cheeks, and her breath came more quickly, as it usually does when an eagerly anticipated but somewhat frightening moment draws near. Such a moment demands all one’s powers of thought and will, while awakening hope, timidity and—who knows?—perhaps a feeling of inadequacy when the habits of one’s entire life collide with the daunting strangeness of a new situation.

She stopped in front of the gate of one of the most ostentatious townhouses and looked at the number. It was apparently a number that she remembered, because after taking a long, deep breath she began slowly to approach the wide, sunlit entrance.

She had hardly taken a dozen steps when she saw two women coming down the steps. One was dressed with painstaking care, even a certain elegance. Her bearing was confident and her expression was not merely serene but self-satisfied. The second was younger—very young, and pretty. She wore a dark woolen dress, a threadbare shawl and a little hat that remembered more than one autumn. She walked with her arms down and her eyes fixed on the ground. Her red eyelids, pale complexion, and thin waist gave her entire figure a look of sorrow, weakness, and fatigue. It was clear that the two women knew each other well, for they spoke intimately.

“My God! God!” the younger one said quietly, almost moaning. “What will I do now? The last hope is lost. If I tell my mother that I have still not gotten any work, her illness will get worse. And there is nothing to eat at home . . .”

“Well, well,” replied the older woman, in whose voice a note of sympathy sounded above a tone of strongly felt superiority, “do not worry so much! Just work a little on your music.”

“Oh! If I could only play as well as you, madame!” the younger one exclaimed. “But I cannot . . .”

“My dear, you do not have the talent!” said the older woman. “What can you do? You do not have the talent!”

As they were speaking, the two women passed Marta. They were so absorbed, the one in her self-satisfaction and the other in her despondency, that they did not notice the woman whose mourning dress brushed past them. But she stopped suddenly and followed them with her eyes. It was clear that they were teachers who had left the place to which she was going, one with a beaming face, the other in tears. In a half an hour, perhaps a quarter of an hour, she would also be descending the stairs she was now mounting. Would her visit end in joy or tears? Her heart pounded when she rang the bell on the door, which bore a gleaming brass plaque with the inscription:

INFORMATION BUREAU FOR TEACHERS

LUDWIKA ŻMIŃSKA

At the sound of the bell the door opened into a small entrance hall. Marta passed through it into a spacious room lit from two large windows that faced the crowded street. The room was adorned with fine furniture, including a new, ornate, and expensive grand piano that would be noticed at once by anyone who entered.

There were three people in this room. One stood up to meet Marta: a middle-aged woman with hair of an uncertain color, smoothly combed under a shapely white cap, and rather stiff posture. Her face, with its regular features, had nothing noticeable about it. Nor did her gray dress, which had no decoration apart from a row of monotonous buttons down the front. Nothing about her either attracted or repelled. She was dressed from head to foot in a style that was businesslike and nothing more. Perhaps at a different time or in another place this woman could smile freely, express tenderness with her eyes, extend her hand in warm greeting. But here in this drawing room, where she received people who called on her for help and counsel, she appeared in the character of a professional intermediary between these visitors and society. She was as she was supposed to be: polite and proper but reserved and cautious.

This room was a drawing room in appearance only; in fact, it was a place of business just like other places of business. Its owner offered advice, guidance, and useful contacts for those who demanded them from her in exchange for mutual services rendered in kind. It was also a purgatory through which human souls passed, ascending to the heaven of a position secured or descending to the hell of involuntary unemployment.

Marta stopped in the doorway for a moment and looked at the face and figure of the woman walking toward her. Her eyes, which yesterday had been full of tears, today were dry and shining, and had taken on an expression that was exceptionally shrewd, almost penetrating. All the young woman’s powers of thought were visibly concentrated in them as she tried to look through the outer casing and into the depths of the being whose lips would issue a judgment, for good or ill, concerning her future. Marta was coming to someone on a matter of business for the first time in her life. The matter was one of the utmost importance to poor people: the need to earn a living.

“Madame has come to the information agency?” asked the proprietress.

“Yes, madame,” she replied, adding, “I am Marta Świcka.”

“Please sit down, madame, and wait a little until I finish my interviews with the ladies who came first.”

Marta sat down in the armchair that was pointed out to her. Only then did she turn her attention to the two other persons in the room, who differed immensely as to their age, dress, and bearing.

One was a woman of twenty, very pretty, with a smile on her pink lips and blue eyes that looked around brightly, almost joyfully. She was wearing a light-colored silk dress and a small hat that set off her fair hair exquisitely. Ludwika Żmińska must have been talking with her just before Marta entered, for she turned back to her immediately after greeting the new arrival. She spoke English, and from the first words of her answer one could guess that she was an Englishwoman.

Marta did not understand the women’s conversation because she did not know the language they spoke. She only saw that the Englishwoman’s easy smile did not vanish and that her face, her posture, and her way of speaking expressed the confidence of a person who was accustomed to being successful—who was sure of herself and the fate that awaited her.

After a brief talk, the proprietress took a sheet of paper and began to write in a flowing hand.

Marta watched every move attentively, for this scene had a bearing on her own situation. She saw that Ludwika Żmińska was writing a letter in French; she saw that it mentioned a figure of 600 rubles, and that on the envelope she was writing the name of a count and of the most beautiful street in Warsaw. Then, with a polite smile, she offered the letter to the Englishwoman, who rose, bowed, and left the room with a light step. She held her head high; her lips curved in a satisfied smile.

“Six hundred rubles a year!” Marta thought. “Good heavens, what wealth! What good fortune to be able to earn so much! If I get even half that sum, I will be easy in my mind about Jasia and myself.”

Then she looked at the person with whom the proprietress began speaking after the Englishwoman left—a person who drew her interest and compassion.

She was a woman perhaps sixty years old. She was thin; her withered face, with red eyelids, was covered with a dense network of wrinkles. Her hair was almost completely white; it was parted in the middle and combed back smoothly under her black, rumpled hat, the relic of a fashion long past. A black woolen dress and an old silk stole hung loose on her gaunt body. Her small white hands, with almost transparent skin and bony fingers, rolled and squeezed a linen handkerchief that lay on her lap. A corresponding anxiety was reflected in her once-blue eyes, now faded and without luster, which she lifted to the face of the proprietress. They moved from one object to another, mirroring her apprehension and the painful jerking movement of her exhausted mind as it searched for a point of support, comfort, and peace.

“Have you ever worked as a teacher?” Ludwika Żmińska asked her in French.

The poor woman stirred in her chair, moved her eyes up and down and along the wall, squeezed the handkerchief convulsively, and began quietly:

“Non, madame, c’est le premier fois que je . . . je . . .”

She broke off. Obviously she was searching for the foreign words that could express her thought, but they escaped her tired memory.

“J’avais . . .” she began after a moment, “j’avais la fortune . . . mon fils avait le malheur de la perde . . .”

The proprietress sat cold and upright on the couch. The elderly woman’s linguistic errors and grating pronunciation did not bring a smile to her lips, nor did her agitation and painful anxiety awaken any pity.

“That is sad,” she said. “Do you have only one son, madame?”

“I do not have him anymore!” the elderly woman said in Polish. But, suddenly recalling her obligation to display her foreign language skills, she added:

“Il est mourru par désespoir!”

The elderly lady’s faded eyes did not moisten with tears or shine with the slightest gleam when she uttered the last words. But her pale, narrow lips trembled in the labyrinth of wrinkles that surrounded them and her sunken chest shook under the old-fashioned stole.

“Do you know music, madame?” the proprietress asked in Polish, as if she were adequately informed as to the elderly lady’s command of French after hearing her few words.

“I used to play, but . . . a very long time ago . . . I do not know, really, if I could now . . .”

“Or perhaps German language. . . .”

The woman shook her head.

“Then what can you teach, madame?”

The tone of the question was polite, but so dry and cold that it amounted to dismissal.

The elderly woman did not understand that, or did not allow herself to understand. She had counted most on her knowledge of French to help her receive a small nest egg that would save her from destitution in the final days of her waning life. Sensing that the ground was giving way under her feet, and that the owner of the agency intended to end the interview without giving her any referrals, she grasped at the only remaining life raft and, squeezing her linen handkerchief still harder in her trembling fingers, quickly began to speak:

“La géographie, la histoire, les commencements de l’arithmétique . . .”

All at once she went silent and looked at the opposite wall with flabbergasted eyes, for Ludwika Żmińska had risen from her seat.

“I am very sorry,” she began slowly, “but at present I do not have a position that would be appropriate for you, madame.”

She finished and stood with her hands folded over the bodice of her plain gray dress, clearly waiting for the other woman to take her leave. But the elderly lady sat as if riveted to her seat. Her restless hands and eyes seemed frozen. Her pale lips opened wide and quivered nervously.

“None!” she whispered after a while. “None!” she repeated. She rose stiffly from her chair as if she were being moved by a force other than her own. But she did not leave. Her eyelids swelled and her pale eyes became glassy. She rested her trembling hand on the frame of the chair and said quietly:

“Perhaps later . . . perhaps sometime . . . there will be a place . . .”

“No, madame, I cannot promise you anything,” replied the proprietress, always in the same firm, polite tone.

For a few seconds the room was utterly silent. Suddenly two streams of tears gushed over the old lady’s wrinkled cheeks. She made no sound; she did not say a word. She bowed to the proprietress and hastily left the room. Perhaps she was ashamed of her tears and wanted to hide them as quickly as possible; perhaps she was in a hurry to visit another agency with the hope of finding new employment.

Now Marta was alone with the woman who was supposed to decide whether her most ardent hopes and desires would meet with fulfillment or failure. She was not afraid, but she was deeply saddened.

The scenes she had witnessed had made strong impressions, stronger because they were new. She was not accustomed to seeing people looking for work, chasing after a piece of bread. She had never guessed, never been aware that that chase involved so much anxiety, distress, and disappointment. Work had existed in Marta’s imagination, whenever she had thought about it, as something one need not lean out far to obtain. Here, at the first stop on this unknown road, she began to understand much that was daunting and saddening.

But she did not give way. She assured herself that she was a young, healthy woman, well brought up by excellent parents, and that she, the wife of a sensible man who had made his living working with his mind, could not meet with the same fate as that poor, sad girl she had met on the stairs, and this elderly woman, a hundred times unhappier, who had just rushed out with two streams of tears coursing down her wrinkled face.

Ludwika Żmińska began with the question she usually asked at the start of her interviews with candidates for teaching positions:

“Madame, have you ever worked as a teacher?”

“No, madame. I am a widow. My husband held a post in a government agency. He passed away a few days ago. This is the first time that I have wished to enter the teaching profession.”

“Ah! So you have a diploma from an institution of higher learning?”

“No, madame. I was taught at home.”

The women exchanged these words in French. Marta expressed herself in that language well and easily; her pronunciation was not perfect, but it had no peculiarities that offended the ear.

“Which subjects are you able and willing to teach?”

Marta did not respond at once. It was odd: she had come here intending to find work as a teacher, but she was not certain which courses she could actually teach, and wanted to teach. She was not accustomed to evaluate her intellectual assets. She only knew that they were sufficient for a woman in her situation: a gentleman’s daughter and a government official’s wife. However, she did not have long to think. She recalled the subjects she had studied hardest during her childhood, the subjects that formed the foundation of her education and that of her contemporaries.

“I could give lessons in music and French,” she said.

“As to the second,” replied the proprietress, “I note that you speak fluently and accurately in French, although that is not all that is required to teach. I am certain, however, that French grammar and spelling and even a little French literature are not foreign to you. But music . . . forgive me, madame, but I must assess the level of your artistic attainment if I am to find the appropriate way to utilize it.”

Blushes appeared on Marta’s pale cheeks. Having been schooled at home, she had never taken examinations in front of anyone. She had never performed for an audience outside her family circle. Several months after her wedding, she had closed the piano her husband had bought for her, and then opened it only a few times—when only the four walls of her pretty drawing room were listening, and Jasia’s little ears as she jumped on her nanny’s lap in time to her mother’s music.

However, the woman’s demand had nothing offensive about it. It was based on the simple and generally accepted law that in order to judge the value and properties of anything, one has to see it, consider it, and apply it in a situation for which it is appropriate and useful. Marta understood that, so she rose from her armchair, took off her gloves, and approached the piano. She stood there for a moment with her eyes on the keyboard. She recalled her girlish repertoire and hesitated, unable to choose among the compositions she had played well enough to earn praise from her teachers and hugs from her parents. She sat down, still debating inwardly, when the door opened with a rattle and a woman’s sharp, penetrating voice sounded from the threshold:

“Eh bien, madame! La comtesse arrive-t-elle à Varsovie?”

With these words a lively, handsome woman burst rather than walked into the room, a woman of average height with a dark complexion. She wore a somewhat peculiar coat with a scarlet hood that glowed garishly against the deep black of her hair and the olive tone of her skin. Her dark, glittering eyes darted around the room and fixed on the figure of the woman sitting at the grand piano.

“Ah, vous avez du monde, madame!” she exclaimed. “Continuez, continuez, je puis attendre!”

She threw herself into an armchair, rested her head on the back of it, and crossed her legs, showing very graceful feet in pretty shoes. Then, folding her arms on her chest, she fixed her inquisitive, penetrating gaze on Marta.

The blushes on the young widow’s cheeks deepened. The presence of another witness to her performance made the situation no less unnerving. But Ludwika Żmińska turned toward her with heightened interest and an expression that seemed to say, “We are waiting!”

Marta began to play. She played “The Maiden’s Prayer.” During the time when she had studied music, all young ladies played “The Maiden’s Prayer,” a sentimental blend of melancholy tones mingling with moonbeams from the windows and sighs rising from girlish bosoms. But the information agency’s drawing room was lit by clear, sober daylight. The sighs of the woman playing “The Maiden’s Prayer” were not the sighs that fly to the “heavenly realm,” or the green field where the black horse gallops. They were sighs which, when stifled, continue to rise, pouring into the ear of the woman and mother the cry that is simple, earthly, trivial, and commonplace and yet tragic, ominous, insistent, and rending:

“Bread! Wages!”

Ludwika Żmińska’s narrow eyebrows knit only slightly, but enough to make her face look cooler and more austere than before. Artful smirks flitted over the swarthy face of the Frenchwoman lolling in the armchair. Marta herself felt that she played badly. She no longer had the touch for those garlands of tender notes that long ago had seemed a melody fit for angels. Her fingers had lost their adroitness and floundered, not always striking accurately. She made mistakes in certain passages; she pressed the pedal unnecessarily; she left out entire measures. She lost her way on the keyboard and stopped to search for it.

“Mais c’est une petite horreur qu’elle joue là.” The Frenchwoman spoke in an undertone, but Marta heard her.

“Chut! Mademoiselle Delphine!” Ludwika Żmińska whispered.

Marta struck the last chord of the wistfully romantic piece. “I must play better!” she said to herself. At once, without raising her eyes or her hands from the keyboard, she began to play Zientarski’s dolorous Nocturne.

But she did not play any better; she played even worse. The composition was more difficult. She felt pain and stiffness in her fingers, which were long out of practice. She sensed that her playing was not making a favorable impression on the woman on whom her fervent hopes depended. She felt that her awkward touch on the keyboard was depriving her of one of the few tools that she had so counted on to help her obtain gainful work. Every false note from her fingers was tearing away one of the few threads by which her own and her child’s welfare hung.

“Elle touche faux, madame! Hé! Hé! Comme elle touche faux!” the Frenchwoman cried again, glancing around with her laughing eyes and resting her graceful feet on an armchair close by.

“Chut, je vous en prie, Mademoiselle Delphine!” the proprietress repeated, drawing herself up with displeasure.

Marta rose from the grand piano. Her blushes turned to purple blotches; her eyes flashed with chagrin. It had happened! A tool she had relied on had fallen from her hands; a thread she might have followed to find a new profession had been severed irreparably. She knew now that she would be given no employment as a music teacher. She did not lower her eyes, but marched with a steady step to the table where the two other women were sitting.

“I never had any talent for music,” she began in a voice that was rather soft but not muffled or trembling. “I studied it for nine years, but what one has no gift for, one forgets easily. And for five years after I was married I did not play at all.”

She smiled a little as she spoke. The Frenchwoman’s bright eyes were fixed on her and it made her uncomfortable. She was afraid of seeing pity in them, or a sneer. But the Frenchwoman did not understand Marta’s Polish. She yawned widely and loudly.

“Eh bien! Madame!” She turned to the proprietress. “Finish with me. I have only a few words to add. When will the countess arrive?”

“In a few days.”

“Did you write to her about the conditions I laid down?”

“Yes, and she accepted them.”

“So my four hundred rubles are certain?”

“Absolutely.”

“And my little niece will be able to stay with me?”

“Yes.”

“And I will have my own room, a servant of my own, horses for riding whenever I like, and two months’ holiday?”

“The countess agreed to all the conditions.”

“Very good,” said the Frenchwoman, rising. “I will visit you again in a few days to learn if the countess has arrived. But if she does not come or send for me in a week, I will break the contract. I do not want or need to wait any longer. I can get ten such positions. Bonjour, madame.”

She nodded to the proprietress and to Marta, and then left. On the threshold she pulled her bright red hood over her head; as she opened the door, she hummed a French song off key. For the first time in her life Marta felt something resembling jealousy. As she listened to the French governess’s conversation with the owner of the agency, she thought:

“Four hundred rubles and permission to have a little niece with her! A separate room, a servant, horses, a long vacation! Good heavens! So many conditions! This woman’s situation is so fortunate, so wonderful, although she does not seem either well educated or very attractive! If I could get four hundred rubles a year and have Jasia with me. . . .”

“Madame!” she exclaimed. “I would be overjoyed to take such a position.”

Żmińska thought for a moment.

“That is not absolutely impossible, but it would not be easy, and that is why I doubt that it would be advisable for you. Surely you acknowledge that in my relations with the people coming to me, it is my duty to be candid. With your French, which is well enough, though not quite Parisian, and your limited training in music—almost none—you could only teach beginners’ lessons, madame.”

“What does that mean?” Marta asked with a pounding heart.

“That means that you would receive six hundred, eight hundred, or at most a thousand złotys yearly.”

Without even a moment’s reflection Marta said:

“I would agree to that salary if I could be accepted with my little daughter.”

Ludwika Żmińska’s eyes, which had expressed the sort of hope that inspires ideas, now grew cold.

“Ah! You are not alone. You have a child . . .”

“A four-year-old girl, calm, gentle. She would never cause trouble for anyone.”

“I believe you,” Żmińska said. “Nonetheless I cannot give you the smallest hope of getting work with a child.”

Marta stared at her in surprise.

“Madame,” she said after a moment, “the person who just left was hired with permission to keep a small relative with her, and many, many other benefits. Is she so well educated?”

“No. Her education is no better than average. But she is a foreigner.”

The stern proprietress smiled for the first time during their conversation, and her cold eyes looked at Marta’s face as if to say:

“What? You did not know this? Where do you come from?”

Marta came from her native village, where roses bloomed and nightingales sang; from a beautiful residence on Graniczna Street, a warm place with four handsome walls that stood between her and the surrounding world. She came from a realm in which first the naïveté and limited awareness of a growing girl prevailed, then the joy and limited awareness of a young married woman. She came from the quarters of society in which a woman lowers her eyes, and so she sees, asks, and knows nothing. She did not know, or she may have heard in passing, something to the effect that what Jove may do, an ox may not. Ludwika Żmińska’s cold but comprehending eyes, with irony wandering through them, looked at her at that instant as if to say:

“The woman in that glaring red hood, who spoke sharply, shrieked loudly, and put her feet on the chair, is Jove, and you, poor creature, merely born in this land where all the mothers of our children are born—you are an ox.”

What she really said was, “If you could part with your daughter, if you could leave her somewhere, perhaps you could find a post with a salary of a thousand złotys a year.”

“Never!” cried Marta, clasping her hands. “I will never part with my child! I will not give her to strangers! She is all I have left on earth.”

The cry burst passionately from her, but she quickly understood its irrelevance and uselessness. She mastered herself and began calmly:

“Since I cannot hope for a permanent position, please provide me with work as a private tutor . . .”

“Giving lessons in French?” the proprietress interjected.

“Yes, madame, and in other subjects as well—for example, geography, history, history of Polish literature . . . I studied all that once and afterward I read—not a great deal, to be sure, but I always read. I would work and I would fill in what is lacking in my information—”

“It would be of no use,” Żmińska interrupted.

“What do you mean, madame?”

“Neither I nor any other owner of an information agency could in good conscience promise you lessons in the subjects you have mentioned.”

Marta stared at the woman with wide-open eyes. Żmińska added after a brief pause:

“Because these courses are taught almost exclusively by men.”

“Men?” Marta stammered. “Why exclusively by men?”

Żmińska raised her eyes and fixed the young woman with a look that said again:

“Where have you come from?”

Then she said:

“Because men are men.”

Marta had come from the realm of blissful feminine obliviousness. For a moment she reflected on what the owner of the agency had said. For the first time in her life, complicated, enigmatic social issues forced themselves on her consciousness, though their aspect was blurred and indistinct. She saw, dimly, their interconnected contours and reacted instinctively with a troubled feeling, but they did not teach her anything.

“Madame,” she said after a moment, “I think I understand why men are more often in demand for teaching positions. They are more highly educated, more thoroughly educated, than women . . . yes. But this consideration only holds if teaching takes on wider dimensions, when the knowledge of a teacher must be both broad and concrete to fulfill the needs of a pupil’s maturing mind. I, madame—I do not lay claim to such pretensions. I would like to teach introductions to history, geography, the history of our literature—”

“Usually men teach these introductions,” Żmińska interrupted.

“Certainly, when they are giving private lessons to boys,” Marta interposed.

“And girls as well,” the owner of the agency concluded.

Marta thought again. After a moment she said:

“Then what is left for women in the field of teaching?”

“Languages. Accomplishments . . .”

Marta’s eyes shone with hope. Żmińska’s last word reminded her of one more tool that she had not thought about.

“Accomplishments,” she repeated quickly. “Not only music, then. I studied drawing. My drawings were even praised sometimes.”

Żmińska’s face again took on an expression of interest.

“Undoubtedly,” she said, “a knowledge of drawing might be useful you, but less than skill in music.”

“Why, madame?”

“Because a drawing is silent and music can be heard. Anyway,” Żmińska added, “bring me some examples of your drawing. If you are very clever at it, if you know how to draw something that indicates that you have a great talent, a highly developed talent, I will be able to find you one or two lessons.”

“I am not very clever at drawing,” Marta replied. “I do not think I have great talent, and I would not say that it is highly developed. I know just enough about drawing to teach the basic rules.”

“Then I cannot promise you drawing lessons for beginners,” Żmińska replied, calmly folding her hands on her chest.

Marta clasped her hands more tightly as an unpleasant feeling came over her.

“Why not, madame?” the young woman whispered.

“Because men give those lessons.”

Marta lowered her head to her chest and sat lost in thought for about two minutes.

“Forgive me, madame,” she said at last, raising her face with an apprehensive expression, “forgive me, madame, for taking up your time. I am an inexperienced woman. Until now perhaps I have paid too little attention to human relations and matters that did not concern me personally. I do not understand everything you have told me. My common sense, and I believe I have it, refuses to accept all those impossibilities that you have pointed out to me because I do not see their causes. Work, as much work as possible, is more than a matter of life and death for me because it is a matter of life and of raising my child. I am confused . . . I want to think justly about these matters, to understand them, but . . . I cannot . . . I do not understand.”